The very idea of bias response teams is an affront to free speech. Why is anyone surprised?
Campus Reform reports:
STUDY: Free speech, inclusivity are ‘conflicting interests’
A new study reveals that bias response team administrators struggle to do their jobs while still respecting students’ First Amendment rights.
University of North Carolina-Charlotte professor Ryan Miller, et.al conducted interviews with 21 bias response team administrators, finding that many of them suffer difficulty “balancing free speech and the creation of an inclusive campus.”
While Miller notes that many of the subjects expressed a desire to uphold the First Amendment rights of students, the “need to balance protecting free speech with creating an inclusive campus environment” presents them with “conflicting interests.”
“I think we always are trying to strike an equitable balance between acknowledging a student’s, or offending party’s, First Amendment right of free speech, free assembly,” asserted April, one of the administrators interviewed for the study.
Jennifer, a diversity administrator at another college, voiced similar statements.
“I definitely believe in freedom of speech, but also I want to make sure that we are a safe and supportive community,” she told Miller. “I think that we can do both of those things. Hopefully, people recognize that they’re not trying to be harmful or hurtful and want to be better in the future.”
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Comments
This is the part where the thought police tell us how conflicted they are. Not conflicted enough to not be thought police, of course, but they’re all torn up.
Right, with free speech you can have a school, and without it you can have a commune, but there’s really no in-between.
The real problem has nothing to do with free speech. It has everything to do with those who CHOOSE to become offended over what they hear. What the country should be learning from this absurd exercise is that you can control speech all you want, but if there is a person who decided they want to be offended by what is said anyway, then they will be offended. Trying to appease all these people who are wanting to be offended by whatever is being said is an exercise in futility and insanity. In the real world, grown ups choose to ignore instead of being offended and go about letting others have the free speech right that everyone s entitle to.